


Fortunate Son

by amurderofmagpies



Category: Call of Duty (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Flashbacks, M/M, Male Bell (Call of Duty), Not Canon Compliant, i was forced to read a book about Vietnam for English and I’m making it everyone’s problem
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-15 12:27:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28938477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amurderofmagpies/pseuds/amurderofmagpies
Summary: !!MASSIVE SPOILER WARNING!! While this fic is backstory centric, there are also scenes that take place during the events of both the Black Ops 1 and Black Ops: Cold War campaigns that include major spoilers for both games. The summary is in the author’s notes.
Relationships: Alex Mason & Frank Woods, Russell Adler/Bell (one-sided)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 22





	1. April 15th, 1966

**Author's Note:**

> Like it says on the tin, this is a backstory fic centered around Bell’s “time” in Vietnam. I got the “good” ending on my first play through and felt utterly betrayed, so I thought I might flesh out Bell’s relationship with the team and make it even worse.  
> The only major changes here are that none of the team members are MACV-SOG, they’re just army, and are aged down a bit to reflect that. Also I just found it odd that a bunch of 50 year olds were doing action movie stunts, as someone with a dad in his late 40s who crackles like a glow stick just standing up. I tried to be as accurate as possible, but I mean this _is_ just something I'm doing for fun, so it's very likely there will be some historical inaccuracies and improper use of military language/slang. Sorry in advance, lol.

_"A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth." Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried._

Something they don't tell you about war is it's actually pretty boring most of the time. It's little bursts of action between long stretches of waiting around for someone to slit your throat while you're sleeping in your foxhole. They were in one of those tense long stretches now. Their fire team, Romeo, had received orders to set up camp near a main road around the perimeter of Firebase Lima, keep the road clear for convoys, and to report any contact. That mostly consisted of two of them wandering the perimeter of the camp with their rifles while the other two sat around playing cards and listening to Dawn Busters and whatever rock and roll records the station had.

It sounds like a pretty easy gig at face value, but after week of sitting around, twiddling their thumbs, and waiting for the Vietcong to rush out of the undergrowth and blast them, it had started to take a toll on morale.

Bell was six months into his service and had turned nineteen during that time. He was the youngest of their team and the other guys reminded him every chance he got. That included having last pick for pretty much every chore. He had just finished the evening watch and was using a box of ammo as a chair as he picked the dirt out from under his fingernails and listened to Elvis Presley's newest record crackle over their little radio for the eightieth time.

"How's it looking out there?" Sims asked from where he was lounging on his bedroll under the stretched out canvas, browsing a porn mag as well as he could in the dim light. Sims was twenty one and a car nut. Most grunts carried around pictures of their family or their girls. Sims carried a picture of his bright red ’64 Chevy impala.

"AO's empty. Same as yesterday." Bell replied, wallowing in boredom, "If they play this song one more time, I'll lose it."

"You need to learn how to relax, Bell— like me. I'm on a beach in Florida right now." Sims smiled, flipping a page.

Bell snorted and went back to fiddling with his fingernails. He tried it for a moment. Imagining that he was somewhere else. It ended up being a few weeks ago when he saw their medic Evan Cross get his brains blown out by a sniper. That sight was burned into his eyes. Bell just standing there in the mud, rain running down the back of his neck into his fatigues as he watched Sims and Walker wrap Cross up in the poncho they fished from his rucksack. Bell could still see the back of his head, ruptured like a sinkhole. He could hear one of the other boys talking on the radio with medevac to get a chopper for the body. After that day, Bell took on the responsibility of patching everyone up.

"Bell." Adler ripped him from the memory with a pat the the shoulder and the offer of a cigarette, "Alright?"

Bell shook his head to clear it and took the cigarette from the sergeant, fishing his zippo from his pocket to light it.

Adler was a twenty year old shake 'n bake, having been promoted in a matter of weeks, but unlike most of his fellow officers he was actually a good one. He seemed to know when to let them goof off and when to get real down to the second. It was a bit sad, though, in a way none of them talked about. Adler had been drafted like the rest of them and was a year into his service but he talked like he had been there when they stormed Normandy. He wasn’t even the oldest on the team, but the jungle aged everyone. Bell didn’t know who Adler had been in the Real World, but he had a feeling Adler was one of those guys who wouldn’t ever really go back. Going from leading a fire team to not being legally allowed to drink was a hard adjustment.

"Yeah, I’m fine. Just uh... Cross." Bell shrugged.

“Mm. Yeah.” Adler said around the cig between his teeth, “That really went sideways, huh?”

The ‘that’ in question was supposed to be a quick strike on a little rice farm. It ended up being a two day standoff against a whole platoon of Vietcong soldiers until Arc-Light came through.

“It was just a matter of time if you ask me,” Walker said as he tossed his bag down next to his bedroll to settle in for the night, “Cross was a hippie.”

“Shut the fuck up, man.” Bell kicked dirt at him.

Walker was nineteen, older than Bell by just a few months, and his immaturity showed. Not for the life of him could Walker take a damn thing seriously. Not Cross getting killed, not missing a toe-popper by a mere inch, not almost falling into a punji pit only for Adler to grab his backpack at the last second. It was all smarmy grins and “Don’t mean nothin’” with Walker.

“Someone needed to say it.” Walker bent down to shake out his bedroll, “Cross couldn’t even kill a rat. I’m just surprised it didn’t happen sooner.”

“Keep digging that fuckin’ hole, I dare you.” Bell jumped to his feet but Adler stopped him with a hand to the chest.

Adler slowly turned to face Walker, staring him down through his aviators. There was a long swath of silence where Adler just stared, smoke drifting from his cigarette while Walker eventually started to squirm.

“Next time,” Adler dropped the hand keeping Bell back and stalked towards Walker, “I’ll let him kick your ass, and maybe you’ll finally learn your lesson.” He stood there for a moment, like he was deciding whether or not to teach it himself. He decided not to.

As soon as Adler turned around and started towards his own bedroll at the end of the row, Walker puffed back up and scoffed, “Whatever.”

Walker and Adler butted antlers all the time, and every single time Walker rolled over with his tail tucked between his legs. It was natural for a bunch of young guys hyped up on adrenaline to get rough with each other every now and then. Sometimes they picked fights with each other just to do it. Bell and Sims picked on each other plenty. However, Walker and Adler didn’t just shove each other for a bit and go back to cracking jokes. Walker always took it took far, made it personal. It was like he wanted Adler to sucker punch him.

One time Walker made the mistake of saying that after they went home, he would show Adler’s sister a good time. Adler made him dig everyone’s foxholes and clean everyone’s rifles for a month. Said it would “build character”.

Sims and Bell lost their shit later when Adler revealed he didn’t even have a sister.

“Honestly, man, I don’t know why you bother stopping him.” Sims chuckled, magazine tucked back into his rucksack as he stretched out as much as he could.

“You guys can’t fight Charlie if you’re too busy fighting each other.” Adler said as he laid back in his bedroll, “And I’m not losing any more of you to stupid shit.”

That shut them all up. Adler was far from the soft type. Whenever he showed any sort of emotion beyond his tuff-sunglasses-wearing-sarge exterior, it meant things were heavy. Bell already knew things were heavy, but acknowledging it made it real. He stayed up while the rest of them eventually dropped off to sleep. He watched for any movement in the thick wood beyond the sandbag walls of their camp and tried not to think about Cross wrapped up in his poncho. It ended up being the only thing on his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know the title is very cliche and I'm not sorry, the song slaps. That Black Ops scene lives rent free in my head. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed the first chapter! I don't have any sort of posting schedule so uhh who knows when the next one will be. Hopefully soon.


	2. June 13th - July 18th, 1966

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm officially one of those people that starts chapters with quotes. Am I cool yet?

_"Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in ones mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them." George Orwell, 1984._

Bell trusted his team blindly. Blind trust wasn't something he was prone to, but needs must when the devil drives. He scanned around as they sloshed through a rice paddy. They were acting as a clean up crew for a raid on a VC outpost, picking off any survivors. It set him on edge more than normal having to keep track of every flicker of moment and tiny noise while they splashed through water. He felt like a coyote looking for scraps. A predator to rabbits, maybe, but still prey to any unseen wolves.

The heat didn't help him relax either. The air was thick and sticky, and the gritty water was uncomfortably warm as it seeped into his boots and soaked his trousers from the knee down. Not to mention the fact he had sweat through his shirt on the hike to the damn outpost.Bell wiped his face on his shoulder and could feel it sting as it smeared the thin layer of grime on his skin. He was about to ask Sims if his face was sun burnt, when a sharp sound rang out from seemingly all directions. Bell jolted like he had been electrified.

He froze and whipped around in a circle, rifle pressed against his cheek, but didn't see any difference in his surroundings. No rippling water, no suspiciously shaking branches in the tree line to the west, nothing.

"Bell?"

He jerked around, rifle falling to his waist but his muscles still primed to aim down the sights, to see Adler frowning curiously at him. He felt a chill claw slowly down his back.

"You... You didn't hear that?" Bell asked. He could barely hear himself over the sound of his blood pounding in his ears.

"Hear what?" Walker said loudly. Sims cuffed him on the shoulder.

"That, uh... bang?" Bell said slowly with a furrowed bow and a tone that suggested he didn't even believe himself. He wasn't really sure how to describe what he heard. It had sounded like it had been played over a PA system. It resonated and echoed, like an explosion, but it had been too sharp to be an explosion large enough to reverberate like that.

There was a long silence where Adler, Sims, and even Walker, just stared at him with concerned expressions.

He swallowed and shuffled his feet, sloshing the simmering water around his knees.

Adler pulled his shades down low enough to peer over them at Bell, "You feelin' okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I—" Bell shrugged his shoulders and shook his head a little— "It was probably nothing."

Sims and Walker just exchanged a glance and kept moving forward, but Adler stood there for a moment longer. He seemed to take stock of Bell, examining him from head to toe. Bell fidgeted a little under his gaze.

Eventually he pushed back up his sunglasses and said, "You need to drink more water." Before turning on his heel to pursue their teammates.

"Yeah." Bell said weakly to Adler's back.

***

His heart leapt up into his throat when he heard the noise again. It was a little clearer now, a distinct clang. Bell had shot straight up in his bedroll, drawing a sharp breath.

"What?" Walker mumbled around a mouthful of canned beans.

"Shut the fuck up." Bell barked and silenced him with a raised palm.

Walker held up his fork and can in surrender, glancing about skeptically as he did.

Bell scrambled to his feet and looked around wildly for any clue as to where the sound had come from, but the sun had set hours ago and all he could see was the unyielding black void just outside the rim of their tiny light.

"Damn it." He growled and rubbed his eyes roughly with the heels of his palms.

"Something wrong?" Adler asked from where he sat leaning against the base of a tree.

"Yeah, Bell's buggin' out." Walker laughed and shoveled another serving of beans into his mouth.

"I heard that thing again. From earlier." Bell said as he begrudgingly smoothed his bedroll back out from where he twisted it getting up.

Adler sat up a bit straighter, puffing out smoke, "What's it sound like?"

"Uhm," Bell sighed as he laid back down, "Weird. Like— It sounds like someone kicking an empty ammo box, but super loud."

"Huh." Adler said.

"You know, most guys just shoot themselves in the foot if they wanna go home." Walker added.

"I'm not fucking around, alright? I heard something." Bell snapped.

"I believe _you_ heard something, Bell," Adler tossed his cigarette aside and stamped it out, "But _I_ still haven't heard anything."

"Some of us are trying to sleep, you know." Sims groaned, face down on his bedroll.

"I'm not lying, man, I..." Bell trailed off when Adler winced at him in pity. Bell couldn't give less of a shit if Walker thought he was crazy, but he did care what Adler thought of him. He couldn't have his unit leader thinking he was losing his mind.

"Bell, I believe you." Adler repeated, "Guys hear all sorts of weird shit in the jungle. Just get some sleep, alright?"

Bell was still uneasy, but he nodded anyways.

***

The third time he heard it, he had flinched and covered one of his ears. Then the flashes started. The sound fried his brain with a surge of memories. All of them split second flashes of seemingly random shit.

Camp Haskins. A dark forest trail. The flash of a mine going off. Riding in a helicopter. A red door.

When it was over, he rubbed his eyes hard and looked to his team members. Adler was eating his breakfast. Oblivious. Sims was still struggling to produce a flame from his zippo and Walker was whittling a stick he found into another, smaller knife.

Bell, deciding not to process whatever the hell that was, let his hand drop from his ear down into his lap and picked at his fingernails again.

He must've looked shell shocked though because when Adler did finally glance at him, he said, "Something on your mind, Bell?"

"No." He said too quickly, "Nothing."

Adler raised an eyebrow, but dropped it.

***

The flashes continued for weeks after that, along with the noise. There was no clear cause, no pattern. It wasn't every day, but there was never any set amount of days between it. He sometimes it hit early in the morning and sometimes during the dead of night. Sometimes he woke up to that fucking clanging noise and it would have him wired the whole day.

It was the same sequence of memories every time, too.

Camp Haskins. A trail. A mine. A helicopter. A red door.

Bell almost hesitated to call them memories. He had experienced them, surely, but he didn't remember them at all. He couldn't place any of it. Sure, he had been in Camp Haskins before, walked plenty of trails before, seen a mine go off before, rode a helicopter before, and seen red doors before— but these moments specifically, these little snapshots, were strange. Like a reverse deja vu. Jamais vu? Bell couldn't remember if that was right, but he remembered hearing it somewhere. Probably Adler.

Bell didn't say anything to the others about his weird episodes. He got rather good at hiding them. After a while they stopped making him jump. He just closed his eyes as the sequence came and went, and the sound faded away. He heard it and he didn't hear it. He heard it because it was piercing and jarring and split his skull, but he didn't hear it because he wasn't going crazy. He couldn't be going crazy. There was already too much shit going on. His shit-schedule was full. Losing his mind was gonna have to take a god damn rain check. It was an irrational train of thought, but he figured that if he just ignored it for long enough it would go away.  


Eventually, it did.

He went three days without an incident. Then five. Then a week. Then two weeks. Whether that was due to his brain finally resolving whatever problem it had or if it really was a figment of his paranoid imagination, it didn't matter. Bell's relief was indescribable. Even so, there was still some small part of him that stayed tense. Bracing for an electric shock that never came.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really just banged this one out. Do you think my ap lit teacher won't be as disappointed in me if I tell her I procrastinated my work by writing? Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this chapter! The inspiration for this came when I was replaying Break On Through and realized the sound that played when every new sequence started was that bell ringing. Idk if that's obvious, but it sure as hell went over my head. The next chapter is gonna be a post-vietnam one, so look forward to that I suppose.


	3. February 24th, 1981

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s been a while. School is thoroughly kicking my ass, but at least zombies is getting more updates :D

_"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light." - Plato_

The air was thick with the scent of rain. Bell hopped out of the car into the mud with a little splash. Volkov was dead and the world was better for it. MI6 could cry them a fuckin' river. Talk about an asshole— Bell was going to have a bruise on his chest in the shape of that guys boot print for like a week. Bell drew in a steady breath, the earthy tang of petrichor flooding his mouth, and shouldered open the door to the safe house.

"Welcome back, kiddos." Lazar greeted around a mouthful of Thai food.

Park and Adler barely acknowledged him as two immediately bee-lined for the office, Park slamming the door shut behind them.

Lazar sucked his teeth and scratched at his beard, "Sheesh. I thought that went pretty well." He was sitting at a workbench, the tools clustered on the floor next to the tabletop which was occupied by several fast foot containers and a plastic bag.

Bell sat down heavily in the metal chair on the other side of the workbench, the flimsy material buckling a little as he did so, "Park wanted the guy alive."

"Oh." Lazar replied and glanced at the office. All of the blinds were closed, so they couldn't see Park or Adler, and if they were talking it was quiet enough not to carry outside of the glass.

"Yeah." Bell sighed and grabbed a dumpling from the boxy styrofoam container, "I could be wrong, but I don't think she's that angry."

The big guy chuckled at that. Out of the entire team, Lazar was probably the most laid back. He was a simple man. He followed orders, got the job done, did the job right, and did it efficiently enough to have the time for a Thai food pit stop afterwards. And Bell had the utmost respect for him because of that. Lazar had his priorities straight. He was always cool, always had a clear head.

Bell thought as much as he slowly chewed the dumpling, blank gaze fixed on the paint splattered and chipped workbench. He wished his brain would shut up long enough to unwind like Lazar did. The constant static in his mind was relentless. His train of thought was always switching and jumping tracks, wrecking at the smallest distraction before starting right back up again. It had been that way since they'd gotten back from Vietnam.

Bell had talked about it with Mason once. Well, "talked about it" makes it sound like the two had a calm, lengthy discussion about their mental health. What actually happened was after Bell asked him to repeat what he said for the fifth time while Mason was trying to explain the difference between The Crickets and The Beatles and which one was clearly superior, Mason said, "Are you deaf or something? What's going on."

"No, it's just—" Bell sighed— "I'm still a little fucked up from the mission."

Mason had furrowed his brow and said something about post-traumatic stress and anxiety, sounding a lot like some hack shrink. Bell just shrugged it off and chalked his foggy head up to nerves, but it still freaked him out a little when he couldn't make sense of his own thoughts.

It freaked him out a lot whenever they strayed too close to the image of that door.

Lazar quickly saved Bell from those freaky thoughts by abruptly setting down his noodle cup, "I almost forgot! I got you something for excellence in the field."

"Excellence in the field?" Bell echoed, blinking a few times as he grounded himself back into reality.

Lazar rustled around in the plastic bag for a moment before he pulled out a sweating bottle of beer and an unfortunately warm ice pack. He pushed both across the table towards Bell with a grin, "Congrats on your first fuck-up."

"I don't know about first..." Bell laughed and pulled his knife from his pocket, using the blade to pry the cap off the bottle.

"First kidnapping then." Lazar amended.

The beer was cheap, but food is always better when it's a gift or stolen from someone else's plate, so Bell had no problems overlooking the stale taste. It was still cold enough to enjoy and Bell drank a good third of it before he set the bottle down with a thunk and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

"Thanks, Laz." He said, "I'll pay you back."

"Just don't get snatched again." Lazar replied and took another bite of his noodles.

Eventually, Bell finished mooching off of Lazar's food, as well as his drink. He pulled his camera out from his pocket and stood up.

"I'm gonna go start developing these. Save me a dumpling." He said over his shoulder and Lazar hummed with his mouth full.

Bell made his way over to the dark room at a leisurely pace, slowly stepping through the doorway into the blood red light. He rather enjoyed being in the little glorified closet. It was quiet and rather peaceful. Well, it usually was. This time Bell set down his camera and was pulling out the film when a TV Bell didn't even know was in the room flicked on with a hauntingly familiar ringing noise.

He felt all of his hair stand up and his heart jump into his throat, his blood running ice cold. His eyes shot up to fix themselves on the screen. It took him a moment to realize what he was even looking at, since the video was so shaky and grainy.

It was war footage. Specifically Vietnam war footage.

The TV switched off just as fast as it had come on.

Bell found himself breathing hard, heart hammering away as his fingertips tingled with the adrenaline that had just shot through him. What the fuck. What. The fuck. Bell slammed his hip into the corner of the table scrambling across the tiny room. It hurt like a bitch but he didn't even notice, he was too busy hitting every button on the television, trying to get it to turn back on to no avail. He started to pick it up and pull it away from the wall so he could inspect the back of it and check the power cord when he jolted at the sound of a voice.

"What are you doing back there?" Park asked. He wasn't sure if he imagined it, but he would've sworn there was a twinge of suspicion to her curious tone.

Bell quickly pulled his hands away from the TV and spun around to face her, "Uh, I... It was... I—"

"You know, if you needed help you could've just asked." She interrupted, holding up his camera which still had film half pulled out of it.

"Um, yeah. Sorry." Bell said and wiped his palms on his trousers. He glanced back at the television one last time before he let Park guide him through the steps of developing a photo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I understand COD is an action series, but I do wish there were more little character moments in this campaign. Also we stan Lazar in this house.


End file.
